


Time Stands Still

by ElvenSemi



Series: Inspiration [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Minor Angst, Minor Injuries, Short, Song Inspired, episodic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvenSemi/pseuds/ElvenSemi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Broken up at the abscence of Solas, Lavellan gets an idea. Lavellan gets a wonderful awful idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Time Stands Still [Part 1]

It was embarrassing, now, but in the time that stretched out after she had completed what she had thought the final goal in her life, stopping Corypheus, sealing the rift once and for all, she had assumed her vanishing elf would reappear.

It seemed obvious. When she didn’t see him directly afterwards, her mind had thought back to when his friend had died, and he had needed time. She had told him he didn’t need to mourn alone, but he had certainly never taken her up on that. And he had said, after Corypheus, he would explain everything. He would explain. She could finally KNOW, what had happened, exactly. What was in the past, present, or future, that kept him alternatively grabbing at her with desperate passion and then shoving her away. He had been right, in a way. The heartbreak had given her strength to utterly obliterate Corypheus. In that heated moment of destruction, her thoughts had not been on revenge, or saving the world. They had been on Solas. If I do this, he will _tell_ me.

So she had merely waited. She had never had plans after Corypheus in the first place. She had assumed that she would die, or that if she survived... Well, she had always known Solas would leave. She had just thought perhaps he might at least give her the option of running away as well. She had never wanted to be the head of a human Inquisition. He knew that, though he had thrust her into the role as much as any of her friends. Now, especially with his sudden absence, she was stuck. In a way, it was easy to go through the routines. The world still needed cleaning up. She kept herself busy. Did what everyone needed her to do.

It was after a month, perhaps two, it was so hard to keep track, that she slowly began to realize.

It was Leliana not bringing up her mission to find Solas unless it was first brought up to her. She was preparing to take her throne, perhaps, and did not have time for the elf who put her on it. Or maybe it was just impossible, and Leliana knew that.

It was Iron Bull’s sympathetic glances, the way he poured her a mystery drink whenever silence stretched a little too long.

It was Sera, even Sera, constantly chattering to fill empty space in the void, but somehow, utterly failing to bring up elves, once her favorite subject of deridement. Especially after the Temple of Mythal. The break had been sweet, at first, since she and Sera had never and would never see eye to eye on subjects like elves and magic. Then it just because obvious, another glowing arrow pointing towards the wound that, apparently, absolutely everyone could see.

One day, she woke up, looking into the mirror to see heavy bags under her eyes. She slept rarely, and this was why. She had dreamed in the Fade, and it had been cruel. She had dreamed of that cursed waterfall, Solas’ eyes as he backed away. She stared into the mirror, tried to reassure herself. When he had left before, vanished alone into the woods, he had returned shortly; he had said he could hardly leave her now. She had thought that he meant after all they had been through, he could not just disappear out of her life altogether.

She had been wrong. She gazed into her mirror, her bare face confirming it to her. He had not been speaking of an unbreakable connection, but of a matter of time. An aspect of...

An aspect of time...

The mirror she stared into shattered, shaking her thoughts. Disconnected, somehow unaware of what she had done, she looked down at her fist, now a mess of glass shards and blood.

She stared as the blood began to pour down her arm, drip off of her, staining the fine white Orlesian carpet red.

An aspect... of time...

Blood, dripping onto the carpet, red, reminding, revisiting...

That was it!

In her reluctance to throw away any knowledge at all, in her thirst to know, she had kept a man, rather than kill him, exile him, or, as some suggested, make him Tranquil. She had told him that he worked for her now. And unlike her friends, who were slowly slipping out of her life, Varric to the Free Marches, Vivienne back to Orlais, Leliana to her own throne, he was still here. He couldn't leave. And he had to do what she told him.

An aspect of time!

She could still fix this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one of an ongoing, out of order series, heavy on time magic and angst. It will get smutty eventually (as I work up my courage >////>) as well as angsty and fluffy depending on the time period. Each chapter will be named after a song it's inspired by. Despite being out-of-order, it's all the same Lavellan throughout. 
> 
> I haven't written fanfiction in a decade, and I have _never_ published my work online. Please be free with your comments and critiques (be gentle, hahren!). I hope someone out there can genuinely enjoy this shameless work.


	2. Time Stands Still [Part 2]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lavellan struggles with multiple sources of power in an attempt to bend time magic to her command.

A new obsession helped. 

It gave her something to focus on, rather than drifting listlessly from task to task. “What? Oh, yes, sure,” followed by a trip that once would have thrilled her,but was now dull, became silence, as she locked herself away, sometimes alone to practice, sometimes with Alexius, whom she had sworn to secrecy. It hadn’t even been difficult. Who would he tell? Dorian? Dorian would leave for Tevinter soon enough. He had his own grand plans. And, to be blunt, Solas was the only one who had meddled when he thought her being unwise with her magic. Dorian was a necromancer, and Vivienne had long since learned that whenever she told Lavellan not to do something, the willful elf would immediately turn around and do it. Without Solas there, she reached deep into the void, to take what she would need. 

Without the breach, Alexius couldn’t grasp the power to truly walk through time again. But Levellan still had the mark, and she could still draw power from the fade, still manipulate the fabric of the Veil. She thought it would be enough. When it wasn’t, she began to explore… other options. She could feel it, just out of her grasp, her fingers brushing along the outside edges of something she had to grasp. 

When Solas had been around, he had helped her with her mark, learning to control it instead of flailing it around, sucking demons through holes in space on sheer accident. She turned even more of her focus onto it now, trying to turn it from a chaotic scar on her aura into a fine tuned weapon, a tool that she could use. 

It was working. 

Had Solas just not realized the sheer range of power the mark granted her? He had showed her carefully how to use it to heal the Veil, and how to keep it from hurting her friends accidentally (after repeating nightmares about accidentally sucking Cole into the Fade), but if he had suspected that she could mix its power in with her own magics, he had never mentioned it. 

If Alexius was apprehensive, or if he was suspicious of her motivations, he never showed it. Never once did he ask her why she wanted the knowledge, what she planned on using it for. Well, he had never been the same since his son died. Maybe he just genuinely did not care, and was just grateful for something to fill his time. 

The power of the mark allowed her a break through. 

She had been sitting in her room, focusing her will through the mark and into the magic as she had been practicing, when it happened. Similar to when they had all seen a vision of Corypheus near the Breach, the violent glow of her magic filtered through the sickly green of the mark lit up the world around her in shades of blue and green. 

Ghostly figures stepped through her room, voices echoing and wavering through time reached her ears. 

“We’re just a little worried about you, Twinkle-Toes.” Varric’s voice was mistakable even though it was distorted, as if she were hearing from underwater. She saw his stout figure carefully approach what had to be her. It was bizarre, seeing herself from the outside. 

“Why?” she said, with a laugh she had thought at the time to sound genuine. Hearing it from the outside, she could tell how painfully forced it was. “We’ve defeated Corypheus. The world is saved. We won. Why worry about me now?” 

“Well, you’ve been a bit…” Watching from the side as she was, Lavellan noticed his eyes glide over to the half dozen empty bottles on her desk. “…Distracted?” 

“I’m just unsure of what to do next,” came her own voice through time. “I wasn’t expecting to live this long.” That much had been the truth. The blue haze that was Lavellan sat down on the corner of her bed, still not looking directly at Varric. “I wasn’t expecting to still be here. I didn’t have plans. I’ll land on my feet, though. Have you ever seen me do otherwise?” 

“Well, there was that one time when Cole startled you, up in that tree.” 

The magic twinged pink slightly, as the Lavellan in the here and now flushed, remembering what Varric was referring to. Past Lavellan had a similar reaction, at first smiling at the memory, and then suddenly frowning, the touch of warmth draining from her eyes as if it was being pulled through a rift. 

“I would have landed on my feet if Solas had not caught me, certainly,” she said with a painfully forced smile. 

“Just… You know we’re all here for you, if you need us, Lavellan.” Her past self started at hearing her actual name from Varric. He was serious, uncharacteristically so. 

The vision began to fade. Lavellan’s strength was wavering. She hadn’t even noticed how much she was being drained, even with borrowing power from the Fade the way she was. She tried to pour more of herself in, but the mist lost form, and then vanished. She swore. 

_For now,_ she thought darkly to herself. That’s what she had said, almost too quiet to be heard. For now. Solas had been there, and then he had not. And they all had similar plans. Varric would eventually head to the Free Marches to help rebuild. Cole flirted with the idea of returning to the Fade. At the time of the memory she had seen, perhaps a month earlier, Sera had already left. She couldn’t have gone fast enough, couldn't have run far enough from the scary elfy mage, Lavellan was quite sure. All were trickling away, and all had plans. And she had known, that without the threat of Corypheus, all of her friends would leave, eventually. Solas had, and he was the only one she thought might stay at her side. Him leaving had been a promise of abandonment from the others, and she had not been wrong. Nearly all had left or had plans to. 

She shook out of her sullen memories and looked down at the mark on her hand, which sputtered tiredly. She should rest, to regain her strength. Instead, she reached onto the desk for a lyrium potion. Sleep was not something she relished. The only reason she ever let herself slip into the Fade was when she absolutely had to, lest her strength as a mage run completely dry. 

She hated it. She needed another way. The strength from the mark just wasn’t enough, and her own mana supply was so pathetically small compared to the task in front of her. She sighed, standing and approaching her vanity, planning to tuck the empty bottle there. She kept them out of sight in case of visitors. Only some of them had held lyrium after all. She absentmindedly reached to open a drawer and hissed in pain. 

An unseen shard of glass from her shattered mirror had cut into her, along the side of her hand. She should have just fixed the damned thing, but she had been utterly unwilling to have a mirror in her room, so she had just cleaned it up as best she could. Clearly, she had missed a small shard. Wincing, she dug it out of her skin. Perfect. Now she’d have to waste supplies or mana on healing; pathetic. How could she hope to have enough power to punch through time itself if she wasted it on such frivolities as stopping the flow of blood? 

…

_Yes,_ temptation whispered into her mind. _In fact, why stop the flow at all._


End file.
